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Topic: Washboarding...ahhh (Read 2070 times)

Hot today and 2 of my 8 colonies are washboarding (and drones are being expelled) today!

What a wonderful site, they do seem quite happy. One is a secondary swarm cast from my LONG Hive, a 2011-12-survivor). Never thought I'd see it from that one....but the queen comes from great stock (BeeWeaver). The other is a 2012 NUC from this sites BeeNuts. How cool.

How do you spell celebrate? 8-) 8-) 8-)

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Speaking of washboarding ---it is really hot here abd has been all year.

Yup! This is precisely what my primary hive looked like for most of the summer (I have two other nucs).

I came up with a watering system that would funnel rain water into a reservoir in the hive with the theory that it would keep them from watering at the neighbor's pool, and more bees being able to work would bring in more honey. The "washboarding" almost immediately stopped. Pretty much frighteningly so...

So one of two things have happened. Either my theory/invention actually worked - meaning more bees are able to work since they can better regulate temperature without having to gather water... or I've just managed to kill all my bees. This weekend I'll be opening the hive for the first time in a month to see the results. Wish me luck.

yep- pictures- I have wondered @ supplying water within the hive mainly because every feral colony that was in a tree that I captured had a water source in the bottom of their tree house and there were bees' down there getting a drink and walking back up into the combs. lee...

I never did get pics. The washboarding never did come back on the hive with the water reservoir, though it seemed to be working like a champ. To be fair, the reservoir I built also had vents at the top to help with the added humidity, so there's a lot of confounding variables here. It could just as easily be that the additional ventilation was what helped instead of the water supply. (Either away, they've stayed away from the neighbor's pool.)

I ultimately switched my two nucs to a medium hive body, and then left the three of them alone for the next month. We've been in a serious dearth here in Northern VA, so I checked them last week and this is what I found:

The two new hives (previously nucs) had exactly ZERO honey stores. Not even a drip. They were so dry that even smoking them did nothing but irritate them more. As much as I don't want to, I'm going to have to feed them to get them through the winter.

The hive WITH the water source was still going strong, but also had a very small amount of honey. Only two or three frames worth. Still, the fact that they had any at all I'll assume means the water supply / vents in the hive did something to help them. It certainly didn't seem to hurt.